Building talent

We are committed to providing employees and leaders with the skills and knowledge to perform their jobs and prepare them for future roles. That’s how we deliver on our business strategy.

Suncor provides learning opportunities that align with our employee and leader capability models. These models are the roadmap for our capability development, steering us toward the skills, knowledge and behaviours we need to develop to contribute to the company's strategy — and future success.

Learning and development is critical to our business because it allows people to stretch, learn and share their talents — and that's how we'll reach our business goals.

Development goals

At Suncor, capability development planning is a structured process to identify what and how employees will learn over the next year. And while employees own their own capability development at Suncor, they collaborate with their leaders to set annual development goals.

To meet those goals, we provide multiple learning approaches. Learning opportunities exist in the form of:

on-the-job experience

learning from others

online tutorials or web-based training programs

classroom training

New Career Compass online tool

Suncor's new Career Compass is an online tool that gives insight into how careers work at Suncor and explains different ways employees and leaders can move into a new position or stay in their current role and have a satisfying career. There are two main career streams at Suncor:

technical/professional

leadership streams

Our Career Compass helps employees consider which stream is best for them.

Within the compass, there are many resources that help identify what career moves might make the most sense for individuals based on their interests and skills. It also shows how others have navigated their careers at Suncor and gives a standard way to talk about career and development.

The compass, along with the other resources in our online development toolkit, supports our ability to retain and engage the people to meet our business needs.

Educational assistance programs

In addition to offering a broad array of in-house leadership and employee development programs, Suncor offers educational assistance. This program provides financial support to employees who advance their education through external learning programs in support of their careers. Suncor also offers a company-wide scholarship program to help employees' children access post-secondary education.

Developing our leaders

We need to ensure that we have the right people, with the right capabilities, in the right roles, at the right time, to succeed our current leaders and to execute our business strategy over the long term.

Orienting new leaders

In 2013, we will introduce a leader orientation and onboarding program designed to help new leaders — either those recently promoted or recruited to Suncor — to become familiar with Suncor's business and the way we work here.

New leaders will receive information on what is expected in their role, including accountabilities like:

Suncor University has been developed to establish leader and employee competence as a core capability that will help drive our business strategy. The customized experiences are designed to address the needs of employees at Suncor.

Managing performance and development

Performance management at Suncor is central to the company's ability to meet its business objectives and helps the company create an environment where our employees can achieve outstanding business results.

Performance management also helps align the organization, helping employees understand how their performance will be measured. Our process includes both formal and informal feedback — on both the what and the how goals are achieved.

Effective performance management:

ensures strong performance

provides an opportunity for leaders to recognize and reward performance

gives leaders the information they need to support employees' ongoing development

Salaried employees across Suncor use an online tool to capture performance and development discussions throughout the year, including:

Live Profile: allows employees to document their experience, education, aspirations, mobility and other specific skills. This information — visible to the employee's leader and their manager once removed — forms the basis for effective discussions about an employee's experience, interests, aspirations and career development.

Goal setting: employees document their performance and development goals during Suncor's annual goals translation process. This establishes alignment, reinforces priorities and helps set up employees, teams and, ultimately, Suncor for success. It also allows employees to set specific goals for their own career development at Suncor.

Manager once removed discussions: an annual opportunity for employees to meet with their manager's manager to discuss the employee's current work, career aspirations and development goals.

Mid-year reviews: a mid-year check-in with employees and their leader to see if they are on track to meet goals and identify any challenges.

Year-end performance review: employees meet with their leader to go over performance and measure their results. This discussion forms the basis for our salaried employees' performance rating, which is used to inform annual incentive compensation.